Real Estate Trends – Wrentham, Massachusetts

Introduction:

Welcome back for our next market trend report looking at a community in Massachusetts or New Hampshire. If this is the first time you have read one, in these reports we examine the municipality’s year over year change in the real estate market then discuss these observations and how they might affect the market.

Market Trends in Wrentham, MA – December 2013 and 2014:

The Wrentham, MA market has started to slow down a little since last year. Listing and sales prices are down slightly, though the days on market have actually declined (at least at first glance, we’ll look at this closer later). Inventory didn’t change much with 14 sales in December of 2013 and 12 in 2014.

Average Listing Prices:

The first metric we always look at is the average listing price. The average list price for Wrentham, MA in December 2013 was $477,086. In December 2014 it was down to $450,863. That is a decrease of 5.50%.

Average Sale Prices:

The next metric we will examine is the average sale prices. In December of 2013 Wrentham, MA had an average sale price of $464,844, but in December of 2014 that was down to $453,975. This is a slightly smaller decrease of 2.34%. The difference in the decreases between listing vs. sale prices is small, but it is worth noting that in December 2014 there was one house that sold for about $130K over the listed price so that definitely is skewing that percentage down compared to the listed price. Regardless of this both of these are definitely down since last year.

Average Days on Market:

The final Metric to examine is the days on market, which represents how long it is takes for a house to sell in the market. Wrentham, MA had an the average days on market in December 2013 of 94.00 and had an average days on market in 2014 that actually went down to 81.58, for a 13.21% decrease.

In November 2013 there was one house with a days on market of 628 which was more than 3 times higher than the next highest one. In fact it was almost as much as the other 13 houses combined that had a total of 688 days. If this house is removed from the calculation the other 13 properties had an average days on market of 52.92. If we use this for the calculation we get an increase of 54.16%. This tells quite a different story than that initial figure! Using this modified calculation we see that in fact that places are taking a fair bit longer to sell this year. Qualitatively this observation holds up as the 3 lowest days on market were all in 2013 and 4 of the 5 highest (removing the above) were in 2014.

Wrentham, Mass Summary:

The Wrentham, Massachusetts real estate market has somewhat weakened since last year. The small declines in both listed and sale prices support this, though it will be interesting to see if the market stabilizes or if this is an early indicator of a more sizable dip. The days on market increasing a good amount since last year gives some validation to the possibility of the small pricing dips might be the start of a bigger decline as that can often be the early signal of declines since the longer a place stays on the market the more likely the selling price will go down.

In summary if you are looking to sell a house in Wrentham, MA now you should expect to get less for it than you would have last year. You also should expect to take a discount off of your initial price to avoid sitting on it for a very long time.